“During Apollo 8 in 1968, Bill Anders gave humanity one of the most profound gifts an astronaut can give,” NASA chief Bill Nelson wrote on the social media platform X. “He traveled to the threshold of the Moon and helped us all see something else: ourselves. He embodied the lessons and purpose of exploration. We […]
Chang'e-6 is the first of three high-wire uncrewed missions to the Moon planned by China this decade. Its successor, Chang'e-7, will search the Moon's south pole for water, while Chang'e-8 will attempt to establish the technical feasibility of building a planned base, known as the International Lunar Research Station , Beijing has said that the […]
“During this operation, we mainly checked the status of several instruments by turning on switches and applying loads,” JAXA said on social media platform X. “Although there are some glitches in some of the MBC's functions, it still works, so we are carefully checking its condition,” it said, referring to the multi-band camera used to […]
“SLIM managed to survive a night on the lunar surface while maintaining its communications function!” It added that communications were “terminated after a short time, as it was still lunar noon and the temperature of the communications equipment was very high”. But it also says: “Preparations are being made to resume operations once the equipment's […]
The remaining merchandise was sent on behalf of Intuitive Machines' private customers, and includes 125 stainless steel Mini Moons created by artist Jeff Koons. The cargo can last for seven days before lunar night falls, rendering Odysseus inactive. NASA paid Intuitive Machines US$118 million to ship its hardware under a new initiative called Commercial Lunar […]
In addition to Astrobotic’s failed effort, two other private initiatives folded: Beresheet, run by an Israeli nonprofit, collapsed in 2019; Whereas Japanese company iSpace also had a “hard landing” last year. Only five nations have succeeded: first the Soviet Union, then the United States, which is still the only country that has even put people […]
SLIM’s goal was to create a crater where the moon’s mantle, typically the deep interior layer beneath its crust, is thought to be exposed at the surface. JAXA said the two probes successfully separated — one with a transmitter and the other designed to orbit around the moon’s surface to send images to Earth. This […]
Compared to previous probes that landed “a few or more than 10 kilometers” from the target, SLIM’s reported margin of error of less than 100 meters suggests a level of accuracy that was once thought impossible, 20 of the researchers said. Thanks to the culmination of years of effort, according to JAXA. As technology advances, […]
NASA astronaut Frank Borman, who led the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon, has died at the age of 95, the US space agency said Thursday. He died on November 7 in Billings, Montana. “Today we remember one of NASA’s finest,” agency Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. […]
The Indian Space Research Agency had hoped to extend the mission by reactivating the solar-powered vehicle once daylight returns to the lunar surface, but so far it has been greeted with radio silence. According to the Press Trust of India news agency, ISRO chief S. “It’s OK if it doesn’t wake up because the rover […]
The most CO2 was in an 1,800-kilometre-wide (1,120 mi) region called Tara Regio, where there is a lot of “chaotic terrain” with jagged peaks and cracks. What exactly causes the chaos in the area is not well understood, but one theory is that warm water from the ocean rises up to melt the surface ice, […]
“The time evolution of the Moon–Earth distance remained an unsolved problem for half a century,” Rufu said. “However, these new geological proxies for the history of the Earth-Moon system allow us to calculate the Moon’s axial tilt and the extent of the PSR over time.” In 2009, NASA crashed a two-ton Atlas Centaur rocket body, […]
Japan’s compact lander, officially called Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon (SLIM), is designed to land within 100 meters of a specific target on the Moon, much shorter than the normal range of several kilometers . “Creating a SLIM lander will bring a qualitative change towards humans being able to land where we want, not […]
India shut down its moon rover, the first to reach the moon’s south pole, after completing its two-week task to conduct experiments, the country’s space agency said. The Pragyaan rover from the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft was set in “sleep mode”, but the battery was charged and the receiver was operational, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) […]
Raychaudhuri said the mission probe will study coronal mass ejections, a periodic phenomenon in which massive discharges of plasma and magnetic energy are seen from the Sun’s atmosphere. These explosions are so powerful that they can reach Earth and potentially disrupt the operation of satellites. “Aditya will help predict the event and alert everyone so […]